Shallow prayer rebuked and Nineveh held up as pattern
Basil is speaking to his congregation in the famine and says their public prayer is empty, then points to the Ninevites as the opposite example of mourning.
That is why the fields lie dry, because love has grown cold (Matthew 24:12). The voice of those pleading with God cries out for nothing and scatters on the air. For we ourselves did not listen to those who asked us.
What kind of prayer and pleading is ours? You men, except for a few, give your time to business, and you women serve them in working for mammon. Few are left with me in prayer, and even they are dizzy and yawning and constantly turning about, watching for when the singer will finish the verses, for when they will be released from the church and from the demand of prayer as if from a prison.
These smallest schoolboys have laid aside their tablets in the classrooms and are shouting with us, but they treat the matter as a break and a delight and make a holiday of our grief, since they are freed for a little while from the burden of the teacher and the care of lessons. Meanwhile the crowd of grown men and the people entangled in sins stroll through the city at ease and free and cheerful. They carry in their souls the cause of our evils. They set this disaster in motion and brought it about.
But senseless and blameless babies are hurried in and gathered for confession, though they have no grasp of the reason for our grief and no knowledge or strength to pray as we usually do. Come forward into the midst, you who are smeared with sins. Fall down and weep and groan. Let the baby act in ways that fit its age. Why do you hide when you stand accused and put forward one who cannot answer as your defense? Is the judge not mocked, that you should bring in a substituted face? That baby should be here with you in any case, not by itself.
You see how the Ninevites, seeking to win God over by remorse and mourning for the sins that Jonah proclaimed after the sea and the sea monster, did not put the babies alone forward to repentance while they themselves went on living in luxury and feasting. Fasting first tamed the fathers who had sinned, and punishment first afflicted the fathers, and the babies mourned under constraint as an addition, so that gloom prevailed through every age, the sentient and the insentient, the one by choice and the other by necessity. When God saw them humbled, condemning themselves wholly as if for a misery beyond themselves, he pitied their suffering and released them from punishment and gave joy to those who had mourned with true feeling. O harmonious repentance! O wise and concentrated affliction! They did not even leave the animals without reason without a share in punishment, but contrived by necessity to make them also cry out.
The calf was separated from the cow, and the lamb was driven from its mother's teat, and no nursing child was in its mother's arms. The mothers were in their own pens and the young in their own, and pitiful cries from all sides answered and echoed one another. The young, starving, sought the sources of milk, and the mothers, torn by natural feeling, called back their offspring with cries of fellow suffering. The babies, starving in the same way, burst open with the most violent weeping and writhed, and the mothers were pierced to the inward parts by natural pangs.
Greek
Διὰ τοῦτο ξηραὶ αἱ ἄρουραι, ἐπειδὴ ἡ ἀγάπη ἐψύγη. Φωνὴ λιτανευόντων εἰκῆ βοᾷ, καὶ πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα διασκεδάννυται. Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἡμεῖς τῶν ἀξιούντων ἠκούσαμεν. Οἵα δὲ ἡμῶν ἡ προσευχὴ καὶ ἡ δέησις; Οἱ ἄνδρες, πλὴν ὀλίγων, ταῖς ἐμπορίαις σχολάζετε· αἱ γυναῖκες, ὑπηρετεῖτε τούτοις εἰς τὴν ἐργασίαν τοῦ μαμμωνᾶ. Ὀλίγοι λοιπὸν μετ' ἐμοῦ καὶ τῆς προσευχῆς, καὶ οὗτοι ἰλιγγιῶντες, χασμώμενοι, με ταστρεφόμενοι συνεχῶς, καὶ ἐπιτηροῦντες πότε τοὺς στίχους ὁ ψαλμῳδὸς συμπληρώσει, πότε, ὡς δεσμω τηρίου, τῆς ἐκκλησίας, καὶ τῆς ἀνάγκης τῆς προσ ευχῆς ἀφαιρεθήσονται. Οἱ δὲ δὴ παῖδες οἱ σμικρότατοι οὗτοι, οἱ τὰς δέλτους ἐν τοῖς διδασκαλείοις ἀποθέμενοι, καὶ συμβοῶντες ἡμῖν, ὡς ἄνεσιν μᾶλλον καὶ τέρψιν τὸ πρᾶγμα μετέρχονται, ἑορτὴν ποιού μενοι τὴν ἡμετέραν λύπην, ἐπειδὴ τῆς ἐπαχθείας τοῦ παιδευτοῦ, καὶ τῆς φροντίδος τῶν μαθημάτων πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐλευθεροῦνται. Τὸ δὲ τῶν τελείων ἀνδρῶν πλῆθος, καὶ ὁ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ἐνεχόμενος δῆμος ἄνετος, καὶ ἐλευθεριάζων, καὶ γεγανωμένος τὴν πόλιν διατρέχει· ὁ τῶν κακῶν τὴν αἰτίαν ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς περιφέρων· ὁ τὴν συμφορὰν κινήσας καὶ ἐργασάμενος. Ἀναίσθητα δὲ καὶ ἄμεμπτα βρέφη πρὸς τὴν ἐξομολόγησιν ἐπείγεται καὶ ἀθροίζεται, οὔτε τὴν ἀφορμὴν τῶν λυπούντων, οὔτε τοῦ συν ήθως προσεύξασθαι γνῶσιν ἢ δύναμιν ἔχοντα. Σύ μοι πάρελθε εἰς μέσον, ὁ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις πεφυρμένος· σὺ πρόσπεσον καὶ κλαῦσον καὶ στέναξον· ἄφες τὸ βρέφος ἐνεργεῖν τὰ ἴδια τῆς ἡλικίας ἀκόλουθα. Ἵνα τί κρύπτῃ κατηγορούμενος, καὶ τὸ ἀνεύθυνον εἰς ἀπολογίαν προϊστᾷς; Μὴ γὰρ παίζεται ὁ κριτὴς, ἵνα ὑποβολιμαῖον ἀντεισαγάγῃς πρόσωπον; Ἔδει δὲ παρεῖναι κἀκεῖνο μετὰ σοῦ πάντως, οὐ μόνον. Ὁρᾷς, ὡς καὶ Νινευΐται τῇ μεταμελείᾳ τὸν Θεὸν δυσωποῦν τες, καὶ πενθοῦντες ἐπὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν, ἃ μετὰ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ τὸ κῆτος Ἰωνᾶς ἐξεβόησεν, οὐ τὰ βρέφη μόνον εἰς τὴν μετάνοιαν προεστήσαντο, αὐτοὶ δὲ τρυφῶντες, αὐτοὶ εὐωχούμενοι διέζων τὸν βίον· ἀλλὰ πρώτους μὲν ἐδάμασε τοὺς πατέρας τοὺς ἡμαρτηκότας ἡ νηστεία, καὶ ἡ τιμωρία τοὺς πατέρας ἐκάκου, εἰς προσθήκης δὲ λόγον ἠναγκασμένως ἐθρήνει τὰ βρέφη, ἵνα διὰ πάσης ἡλικίας ἡ σκυθρωπότης κρατήσῃ, αἰσθανομένης τε καὶ ἀναισθήτου· τῆς μὲν κατὰ προαίρεσιν, τῆς δὲ κατ' ἀνάγκην. Καὶ οὕτως αὐτοὺς ἰδὼν ὁ Θεὸς ταπεινωθέντας, ὡς ἐπὶ ὑπερβαίνουσαν ἑαυτῶν ταλαιπωρίαν παγγενῆ κατακρίναντας, καὶ τὸ πάθος ἠλέησε, καὶ τῆς τιμω ρίας ἀνῆκε, καὶ τὸ χαίρειν ἐδωρήσατο τοῖς εὐαισθήτως πενθήσασιν. Ὢ τῆς ἐμμελοῦς μετανοίας! ὢ τῆς σοφῆς καὶ πεπυκνωμένης θλίψεως! Οὐδὲ τὰ ἄλογα ἀσυντελῆ τῆς τιμωρίας ἀφῆκαν· ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὰ βοᾷν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἐμηχανήσαντο. Ἐχωρίσθη γὰρ τῆς βοὸς ὁ μόσχος, ἀπηλάθη τῆς μητρῴας θηλῆς ὁ ἀρ νειὸς, παιδίον ἐπιμάζιον οὐκ ἦν ἐν ταῖς τῆς τεκούσης ἀγκάλαις· ἐν ἰδίοις σηκοῖς αἱ μητέρες, ἐν ἰδίοις τὰ τέκνα· φωναὶ δὲ παρὰ πάντων οἰκτραὶ ἀλλήλαις ἀντιβοῶσαι, καὶ ἀντηχοῦσαι. Τὰ τέκνα λιμώττοντα τὰς πηγὰς ἐζήτει τοῦ γάλακτος· αἱ μητέρες, τῷ φυσικῷ πάθει διακοπτόμεναι, συμπαθέσι φωναῖς ἀνεκαλοῦντο τὰ ἔγγονα. Τὰ βρέφη, κατὰ τὸν ὅμοιον τρόπον λιμώττοντα, σφοδροτάτῳ κλαυθμῷ ἀνεῤῥή γνυντο καὶ ἀπέσπαιρον· αἱ τεκοῦσαι ταῖς φυσικαῖς ἀλγηδόσι κατεκεντοῦντο τὰ σπλάγχνα.